Generally, in the food service industry, service providers provide disposable accessories that compliment and improve the customer experience with the food service products. One such disposable accessory is known as the conventional cup sleeve or the cup holder sleeve, for example as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,497. The general purpose of this cup sleeve is to insulate the user's hands from the walls of the cup containing hot or cold liquids, and in some instances improve gripability of the cup. Most often, such cup sleeves are used for cups containing hot coffee, and cup sleeves are readily available at food service provider locations, or other locations providing hot coffee and/or tea beverages for consumption.
However, while the cup sleeve is generally sized, dimensioned, and configured with a structure that fits on cold beverage containers in addition to hot beverage containers, the cup sleeve experiences some shortcomings when used with a cold or ice-filled beverage. Specifically, cold liquid within a container placed in an environment having humidity very often causes moisture from the surrounding environment to condense on the exterior surface of the container and run down that surface to the table upon which the cup sits. If a cup sleeve is utilized, the cup sleeve may capture some of the condensation, but the entire base of the container remains exposed for condensation to form and make contact with the table or other surface upon which the cup is placed. As such, it is clear from the ordinary observer that consumers of cold beverages, such as iced coffee, do not tend to use cup sleeves to capture condensation. Rather, two alternate solutions are generally implemented. A first solution is to wrap a napkin, or paper towel, around the cold beverage container. The napkin absorbs the condensation, but over time becomes saturated with water and easily torn, and does not affix to the cold beverage container in any reliable manner (the napkin, once wetted, clings to the cup, but can always be easily moved, fall off, torn away, or the like). The napkin, and even layers of napkin, have insufficient structure to absorb water and not degrade, decompose, break apart, or become so fragile as to succumb to the tearing described. A second solution commonly utilized is to place the plastic cold beverage container inside a larger polystyrene or other container (i.e., place an entire cup within a second cup of the same configuration). While this solution does insulate the cold beverage, and capture the condensation on the sides and base of the beverage container, the solution is wasteful in that it requires use of two cups where the material in the upper half or more of the second cup is excessive and has no purpose. Furthermore, when the second cup is a polystyrene container, such containers are banned in certain geographic locations for their lack of recyclability, making the need for an alternative solution even greater.
Approaching the problem of condensation on cold beverage containers from a different perspective, the well-known accessory for use with such cold beverage containers to capture the condensation is a coaster. However, coasters do not generally couple with the cold beverage container, thus making it difficult for portability together with the cold beverage. For example, a consumer of an iced coffee would need to separately transport a coaster and place it down on a table or other surface before placing the cold beverage container down on top of the coaster. If the beverage consumer then wants to move to another location, they need to pick up and transport both the coaster, and the cold beverage container, separately. Furthermore, the conventional coaster does not fit in cup holders, such as those found in most automobiles. Several inventors over the years have attempted to address this problem by creating numerous different coasters that attempt to couple with the cold beverage container. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,608,074, 2,727,645, 3,598,271, 4,759,525, and 5,018,695. However, in all instances, the coasters require the container to have special coupling features, or the coasters create a larger structure that is more cumbersome than the original beverage container itself, and wherein the coasters are easily knocked-off or decoupled from the beverage container, making portability and convenience an issue.
The combination beverage sleeve and coaster disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,983 is an attempt at addressing many of the above shortcomings. However, with this configuration, the combination cup sleeve and coaster requires a hexagonal shaped base and hexagonal shaped cross-sectional area. Virtually all beverage containers (and certainly the most conventional iced coffee cups) have a circular base and a circular cross-sectional area. Thus, the hexagonal shape inherently creates a substantially larger structure than the original beverage container, and the structure has gaps at each corner of the hexagonal wall, making it difficult to grip the cup holder sleeve portion without pushing the sleeve off of the beverage container and loosening the coupling fit between the sleeve and the container. Furthermore, another gap is required between the hexagonal base and the wall of the hexagonal cup sleeve, where condensation running down through the gaps of the hexagonal corners can leak out from the base through the gap between the base and the sleeve. As such, the effectiveness of the combination cup sleeve and coaster in the '983 patent to absorb condensation and prevent leakage out is substantially reduced or essentially nonexistent. Likewise, the portability of the beverage container with the cup sleeve is hindered because of the various gaps that allow the container to move around within the sleeve, and because of the non-compatible nature of the hexagonal shape with common cup holders (e.g., in automobiles), making it virtually impossible to place a beverage container with this hexagonal sleeve into a conventional cup holder.